Margot
Let the record show that even when she was fleeing gunshots that probably had something to do with a book full of sensitive information that was riding along in her passenger seat, Margot Travers did not drive like a reckless maniac. She kept checking the rear view mirror, but besides that did little more wrong than occasionally drive five miles over the speed limit. She didn't talk, didn't bother to turn on the radio, and this kept on until she was a good twenty blocks south and another twenty blocks east from where the incident had occurred. A residential neighborhood with quaint brick bungalows and well cared for yards and tall trees that were beginning to bud with spring. There was a small corner park with a stretch of grass and plot of sand with play equipment, where a woman and her two young children were playing on the swing.
The park was so small that it offered no parking lot, so Margot pulled her car up against the curb, under a tall cottonwood tree, and parked it. Killed the engine and took the keys from the ignition and undid her belt, but didn't leave her seat. Dropped the keys in a cup holder instead and sat back, hands in her lap, staring out the windshield.
Then, quietly, to William:
"I think your friend wasn't supposed to be giving Vanessa this information..."
William
He's quiet for the car ride. He's quiet, sure, but he's also buckled in and is keeping his eyes on the road and behind them and seems to be the sort of wound tight that comes from trying to figure out whether or not things are going to get very, very bad very quickly. as though the fact that Santa Fe errupted into gunshots was not the sound of something going bad.
After awhile he stopped trying to keep track of the loopy trail that Margot was driving them on. He, inevitably, does take the book out. Doesn't look sure if he wants to open it just yet but he does anyway- starts folding over the corners of pages that would have pictures shoved into them so he could actually look at the pages themselves.
Unbuckles. Sits still.
"Dude, if someone killed him just now they were being nice," William replies.
Margot
William's reply earned him a raised eyebrow and a look of confusion. She couldn't quite tell if he was joking or not, and if he was she clearly didn't think that this was an appropriate situation in which to do so.
Her eyes fell away from his after a moment and to the book in his lap. She frowned and muttered into the shared space of the car.
"...do we go to the cops?"
William
He looked serious. He looked like he was being completely serious, like death would have been a courtesy in comparison to what could be happening. William doesn't explain, looks back at the book when she asks if they should go to the cops. Runs a hand through his hair-
"We should," he started, "but not before we make copies of this. Jake's a young guy with a drug habit and priors, do you think that people are really going to care too much if some gang wiped him off the face of the planet?" Said as though this was slightly more personal than it seemed.
"I think we should turn this over to the cops, yeah, but I also think that this information gets in the hands of that reporter. There had to be a reason he was willing to give it to a journalist and not the cops- cops should be able to offer some kind of actual protection."
Margot
At first Margot was pretty sure that he was going to agree with them handing things over to the cops and leaving it there, but then he went on to suggest that they make copies first. This has Margot widening her eyes at him and dragging her fingers through her hair but stopping partway so she looked a little manic, sitting there with her elbows out and hands in her hair.
"Why on--," but he was explaining. Jake was young, not very far up the food chain in the world, so his death wouldn't be investigated very well. He wanted to make sure that some information made it to the cops, but that some of it made it to the reporter as well. A deep breath was taken, then blown out slowly from between her lips. The petite witch settled back in her seat, hands still upon her head, and spoke in a stunned sounding voice.
"This is Denver, not Gotham. It's not like the cops are corrupt and going to be in on this drug trafficking ring or anything. So I don't see why a reporter getting the details would be any more important than the cops getting them." A pause, then:
"I'm sorry about your Jake friend. ...What do you think they'd do to him that's worse than gun him down in the street for running off with a bunch of details, though?"
William
[Int+streetwise: because I totally know underworld culture, NBD]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
William
"Aside from standard questionable methods of extracting information and damage control? If he walked off with a lot of vital information, Saints' Resistance hasto send a message because you don't want people getting the idea that they can mess with you. Notes said that Sureños and La eMe don't fuck with him- they're kind of a big fucking deal
"The whole torture and murder thing is pretty standard. Trevor Jackson case, from... two years ago? Two and a half? Failed to ante up a percentage of his sales profits to the Sureños and PD is still looking for the rest of the body," a pause, "it's not that they don't want to help people, or that the police are incapable, it's that there is so much of a backlog of casework that things go cold unless you have the ability to actually put pressure on people.
"The threat of media coverage makes people move. We don't have to give this stuff to Vanessa Truong, if you think it's a bad call I trust you on that."
Margot
Judging by how carefully Margot listened, she had never heard any of this information before. Her head was turned so one ear was aimed toward him more than the other, and her hands moved from her head at last, though hair was tucked behind that one aimed ear on the way down again. Her brows stitched together in the middle with concentration while she tried to remember the gang names and their significance. She expected they'd be coming up again.
When it came back to her, whether she wanted to hand information to the reporter, she cast her gaze William's way once more. This time it was because she was surprised by his last statement-- if you think it's a bad call I trust you on that.
A little suspicious too, somewhere under the surface, because nobody ever said that to Apprentices except other Apprentices and this guy had a Tradition and everything all worked out. They weren't exactly standing on the same level.
"...I don't know, man, we're wizards. What can you do? Can you check... the strands of fate, or whatever, to see if that's a bad idea?" She realized she had no idea what this guy's paradigm was or how he did his Craft. This may be a lesson learned, either good or bad.
William
"Could check to see what the most probable future is," he said, then has to think about it a little more, "it gets messy, because the future is malleable, the best we can get is a very likely future given the current variables at this point in time."
"If you wanna drive me back to Santa Fe at some point, I could check and see what happened at the place where all the gunshots happened. If he's dead we've got more of a window of opportunity than if some shit went down and he's not dead. I'd have to actually be there, though."
That is, he couldn't Work from a distance, couldn't do much more beyond what is immediately within arm's reach and Santa Fe was quite a ways off.
"Could check and see what the local life on the other side of the gauntlet saw. Light posts and concrete and rats make fucking fantastic witnesses," again, serious.
Margot
"Well, we're not going back there now," Margot said definitely. The place would be swarming with cops and she had no desire to get sucked in as an on-the-scene witness, even if they had done nothing wrong and were planning to go to the police at some point anyway. She could imagine that the people responsible for the shooting could still have eyes hanging about, and those eyes didn't need to know her face or license plate number after she delivered that unique little book stuffed with info into the gloves of an officer on the scene. She had enough people to be paranoid without having to add drug dealers to the list.
....oh, no, it's probably too late for that already, regardless. Well shit.
She dipped her fingers into the cup holder to retrieve her keys and put them in the ignition again, but only to trigger the battery so she could roll her window down. She was worried about sticking around Santa Fe, but not so paranoid that she believed her voice would be carried like a whisper on the wind to some spy here at a residential park. An elbow hitched out the open window and she started combing her free set of fingers through her hair with a heavy sigh.
"...If Jake was such a low level fellow, I wonder how he managed to get a hold of so much information... especially all these pictures." Eyes had wandered to the book again, expression a thoughtful scowl.
"Tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day, I'm sure there's gonna be a ton of bar crawls happening here. That might be the best chance to blend into a crowd and go unnoticed if either of us has to go back there sooner or later. I'm just... entry level, I can only sense things, I can't..." He knew, he'd understand. Apprentices. "...but if you want to look back and talk to spirits, and if you need somebody to keep watch when you do..." She looked at him solemnly. She really couldn't possibly be twenty-one years old yet, no matter what her driver's license said, but already she had resigned herselfy to a duty to the weird and dangerous. She was a Witch, those two things were almost specifically her elements. It was clear, in her expression, that she didn't want to be wrapped up in this, would have much rather her table been skipped and that she go home tonight to a relaxing bath. That she planned on reading and studying and maybe even enjoying herself a little tomorrow, not finding out how people died in relation to gang wars.
...but she was already here holding her hand of cards and so was he. She'd be there playing support tomorrow too.
William
They can't go back, they were not going back. Definitive and he didn't argue with her; he could tell a good idea when he heard one. She rolls up the windows, and he's looking at the pages of the book again. Wonders what they're going to do with it. Wonders what's going to happen and who is taking it home and-
"Cool... we head out there tomorrow, see what's going on, and... uh... fuck if I know? Drink? Have green beer? Spend the rest of the day in the police station because we have to give information up?"
"Sounds like a good plan. Meet at my place and we can carpool?"
Margot
"Sounds like a plan," said Margot, even though she hated the very words as they came out of her mouth. They sounded like something somebody she had to answer to was going to overhear and cuff her in the back of the head for someday, when they used Time and Correspondance to look back on the decision that knocked the first domino down in a chain of Very Poor Choices.
All the same, she turned the engine and rolled them away from the park. Maybe she could squeeze in that relaxing bath tonight after all. Relaxation was something she was really going to need if she was going to spend St. Patrick's Day solving crime mysteries.
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